resource

State Recognition or State Appropriation?

Land Rights and Land Disputes among

the Bugkalot/Ilongot of Northern Luzon, Philippines

I miss you, Henry Giroux.

Decolonize Together: Moving Beyond a Politics of Solidarity to a Practice of Decolonization.

glad that this word is finally getting its due.

Kapwa Conference 2012

(Here's the invitation to attend Kapwa conference next year)!

HERITAGE AND ARTS ACADEMIES OF THE PHILIPPINES INC.

L’ Azotea Bldg., 108 Session Road , 2600 Baguio City, Philippines

E-mail: kapwa3@gmail.com; Phone: (+63) 74 - 446 0108, CP: (+63) 09064536108

Hello dear Babaylan friends! How are you? We hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits.

As you may know, we have already started to put KAPWA-3 into motion. Recalling how, during our Conference last year, we discussed the importance of theory building, we wonder if any of you has focused on this kind of work lately?

Theory building (and the assertion of local frameworks in the academe) will be an important aspect of KAPWA-3, slated for June 28 – 30, 2012 at VOCAS and UP Baguio. In this light, we would like to invite you to contribute papers / videos relevant to highlighting the importance of indigenous knowledge. We are looking for presentations that elaborate/explain/expand the concepts, methods and theories of Sikolohiyang Filipino and Filipino Personhood, or define Kapwa Psychology in the context of indigenous mind/decolonialization. One of our goals is for the academe to co-present with an indigenous group and/or person (like Dr. Alice Magos), or present work that they did with an indigenous group or groups and explain why they chose this kind of research. We hope that in this way, the Kapwa movement can continue to live, breathe, spread and evolve!

Aside from being some of our presenters at next year's conference, we would also like to ask for your help in helping us raise funds for the conference. We would like to invite indigenous artists and scholars from other countries, such as the head of the Mongolian Academy for Arts and Culture, Gombojavyn Mend-Ooyo and other culture bearers. Please do let us know in what way you can help or contribute in this aspect of the conference.

We are truly looking forward to experiencing the gifts of the KAPWA-3 Conference with you in June 2012! Thank you so much for your love and continued support. We hope to hear from you soon. Thank you.

With warm regards,

Katrin de Guia and 

Lissa Romero de Guia

l

summer reads

Leche by Zack Linmark
The New Imperial Order: Indigenous Responses to Globalization
Indigenizing the Academy
The Masses are Messiah: Contemplating the Filipino SOul
Mystic Wanderers in the Land of Perpetual Departure
Pedagogies of Crossing
Fate and Destiny
The Water of Life
Race and the Cosmos
The Next American Revolution
Liberation and the Cosmos


manuscript about the Lolas
YES Magazine
ODE Magazine
High Country News

Post-event musings

Post-event musings:

As we drove home from the event, I mused about Lizae's comment -- "it's like creating a mandala" -- and how apt it felt. Like the recent visit of Tibetan monks on my campus and the destruction of the Tara Mandala at the end of four days of creation, we "dissolved" Lizae's mandala with kapwa jamming, gift offering of flowers and poetry to the attendees, picture-taking, and long goodbyes afterwards. 

The evening began with kulintang music and dance in the front garden and then we moved to the garden in the back where Maite offered a dance to the spirit of spring. As she greeted the blooming rhodies and other blooms in the garden, my little Noah was mesmerized by the dance. We all were. The sound of gongs, the color of malongs, the grace of dance, and the silent meditation ushered us into the the sacred space where we would receive the gifts that will be offered by volunteers after we had moved indoors.

Indoors, every corner of Lizae's home was beautified with flowers, water fountains, candles, art work, rock art, flowing luminous textiles.  As the offerings unfolded, we savored dance, chant, poetry, song, drum, harp, cello, kora, visual images, trance dance, food, and kapwa jammin. Afterwards - beaming faces, nourished souls. 

Time stood still. 

As I returned to my books, theories, and to the classroom, I kept thinking of how to awaken the senses, the soul, the light within each of my students. How can I enliven the work of the mind with the work of the body and spirit? How to swim against the grain of what has become normal but stale and tepid? How do I tell my students about my experience at this event and will they get it? Will I be able to adequately articulate why this work (of CFBS) is transformative and can I connect it with the syllabus content I have laid out for them? In the white concrete walls, no- windows-classroom, how can I speak of sacred geography and of the nourishing warmth of spring's sun, the soft drizzle of petals from the cherry trees around campus, the swallows's nest in Salazar Building?  But I do. I try.

With help from Wade Davis and his recent work on the importance of ancient ways in the modern age, I usher students into the importance of paying attention to the ethnosphere - the legacy of our diverse human repertoire on the planet that is now threatened by the power of domination that has been unleashed by the modern ideologies of progress and development.

We leap from the small particular stories to the Big Story. What is the story we tell ourselves and that we live by? Is there a story more compelling than the story of the free market and the American dream? Yes, there is. And it is Indigenous.

Resisting Imperial Peace

New post on the Babaylan Files.
One of my early essays on the Babaylan practice is included in this book. I met Prof. Fe Mangahas, Sister Mary John, Sister Datung, Grace Nono, Agnes Miclat Cacayan and others in this book at the Babaylan conference in 2005 at St Scholastica College  while on a summer research project in the Philippines.  To them I owe so much - Maraming Salamat Po!

And at the recent Bahay Nakpil booklaunch of the Babaylan book, here's a young writer reflecting on the event:

An Encounter with the Babaylan

By Rhea Claire E. Madarang

Warrior, teacher, healer and visionary. This was how Sr. Mary John Mananzan described the babaylan, the historical figure whom before then I only knew through my history schoolbooks as a healer and priestess in Filipino indigenous communities during the pre-colonial era.

Mananzan, a contemporary babaylan herself, spoke these words with a quiet force. I listened, together with a rapt audience of around 40. They were also attendees of the book launch of “Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous” on that warm Monday afternoon at Bahay Nakpil, Quiapo, Manila. Writers of the book, all with deep involvement with the babaylan tradition, and people significant to the creation of the book were speaking in turns.

Warrior, teacher, healer and visionary? I felt overwhelmed by the immensity of the power and significance of the babaylans in pre-Spanish Philippines.

Prof. Fe Mangahas corroborated the power of the babaylan in her sharing, saying that in indigenous communities back then, there were three significant roles - the datu, panday and the babaylan. The datu was the ruler and the panday ensured the livelihood of the people through farming for example – both roles addressed material concerns, while the babaylan was solely in charge of the spiritual realm and also had influence on the material concerns such as determination of the best time for farming.

But the power of the babaylan is not only possessed by women, as I had thought – and as many others had thought, I believe. It is also wielded by men. According to Katrin de Guia, one of the book writers, some northern provinces have men performing the roles of the babaylan. To the Ifugaos, this is the mumbaki.

With every speaker’s words, I felt my awe and respect for the babaylan grow, but I was most jolted by Mananzan’s sharing, for she shared how, in these modern times, she took on the roles of warrior, teacher, healer and visionary in her work for women’s empowerment and social transformation.   

The babaylan is thus not just a powerful historical figure but a very real and present power anyone can access at any moment. As Teresita Obusan, another of the book’s authors, put it: “The spirit of the babaylan never dies.” It is always there, available to everyone.

Upon realizing this, I felt the faintest stirring in my body of – dare I say it? – the babaylan spirit. Is there not a babaylan in me – in all of us? I wrote down this realization in one of the pieces of paper given to us for reflection after the speakers’ sharings.

At the end of the book launch, professor and modern babaylan Grace Odal, performed a babaylan ritual dance, scattering rose petals, lighting incense and singing along the way. In a white flowing dress and with flowers crowning her head, her movements were both graceful – as befitting her name – and forceful.

Slowly, she led almost all of us to dance along with her and urged us to make any movement that came naturally to us. We danced moving in a circle, as though in a trance, but still conscious. The air was electric, charged with the energy of this ancient ritual performed in the present.

After that I had no doubt as to the reality and power of the babaylan spirit. And through that experience I believe I’ve glimpsed the babaylan in me too.

A Bat Taught Me To See

 This is from one of my students:

Learning to See

     Everybody has a fascination.  The next step in that fascination would be to fall in love with it.  The step from fascination to love is an unusual step and I believe it happens for many people in many different ways.  When you say, “I love you” for the very first time; or when you realize that what you feel for someone is too great to hold inside.  I could write this essay about those whom I love, my mom, my dad, and my girlfriend.  Or I could look inside myself and describe another deep love that I hold.  My fascination for this has become a deep love and I know this because it has passed a point in which I could describe my feelings in words.  I know that I love something or someone when the feelings inside make my literal descriptions useless, when words cannot be placed on how that person or being makes me feel.

     I did not know what I wanted to write about, to be honest.  I started to think about everyone that I could, as I mentioned earlier, but none of them seemed to fit.  Yes I love them all but the reason I now know what to write about is because I saw them flying in the darkness the other night, in all their beauty and misunderstanding.  Coming home from class I could hear them flying, I could hear them speaking and finding their way around at night, and I realized, I am in deeply in love with Bats.  Before I begin, however, I must explain who I am and where I find myself as in relation to these bats that I love so sincerely.

     I am twenty years old.  I am white. I am in the “middle” class.  I am a college student.  I am, however, not a robot.  Nor am I a drone to walk around and mindlessly follow our society’s system.  The system that tells me I am in the middle class even though it does not exist.  The system that privileges those who are white and questions those who are not.  The system that does not care about anything other than what their paycheck will earn them.  Before this class I would look at my life and define myself by the facts that are apparent in it.  It is obvious that I am white, obvious that I am not an elite, and mostly obvious that I am around my twenties.  How does this tell a person who I am, how does it tell them what history I hold?  It does not do any of that.  It gives you my face value, and I am not one to judge upon first sight.  How can I relate to these bats that I hold so dear to me, what part of out histories cross.  Will the cross be positive or negative?  I must look into this to see how we are related.

     The history of white people includes mass murders of humans and nonhumans, it includes over-use of resources, and it includes an overall indifference on whether or not Mother Nature is harmed in this process.  This is where my path crosses with the bat; this is why, when I looked up in the night sky and saw the bats, I wanted to apologize.  Bats live in forests and in caves.  They are becoming extinct because humans are destroying their habitat, many bats live in the trees that we are cutting down and many of them live in caves that we are blowing up for minerals.  We are disturbing their hibernation, and this can kill them before winter passes.  Many people would look at this fact and not care at all, why should they?  They hear the word “bat” and see those hideous, hairless, blood sucking, rabies-carrying monsters.  This fills me with grief and anger for the misunderstanding between bats and humans.  Bats have helped us every single second of our lives.  They eat thousands of bugs every hour that could transmit disease to us; they pollinate trees that only bloom at night (such as bananas, avocados, dates, figs, peaches, mangoes, and cashews).  They clean themselves quite often and rarely carry what we fear, rabies.  They are endangered because all we hear is that they will get stuck in your hair and suck your blood.  We are destroying the rainforests, a big food supply for them.  We need to be careful because they give birth to one offspring per year since they have such a long life (about 40 years).  They are dying faster than they are reproducing, this will lead to an eventual extinction.

     I have found a connecting point between us.  Like many other animals that humans have a connection with, it is a connection of destruction from us to them, and life from them to us.  We are blind, as a nation.  There are some of us who are able to see, I hope I can be a part of them soon, but there are many of us who cannot.  It is funny to me that we say these bats are blind.  It is funny because many of them have extremely acute vision.  They not only have vision but they have something called echolocation, which humans cannot hear.  This is a form of sight; to me being able to have sight is not only doing so through your eyes.  Having sight is having an image of what is around you.  Bats have the physical image through their eyes, but they also have an image through the sound waves that they receive from echolocation.  How can a nation call these creatures “blind?”  If we cannot see such a simple fact that bats are able to see, then yes, we as a nation are the true blind.  We have a perception of what the world is around us, yet we cannot see it.  We do not know what the real world is, we see what we want to see and we use what we want to use.  America is blind, it is ironic that in this essay the bat can see and America cannot.

      I can continue on with what I wanted to say.  I want to explain why I fell deeply in love with a bat and it has to do with their “blindness.”  The sun had set and my class had just let me out.  I was walking home when I heard a screeching above my head.  I looked up and to my surprise I saw three flying creatures in the night sky.  At first I could not place them, I did not know what they were.  I continued to watch them and to listen to them and I saw that they were bats.  At the time I had thought bats were blind as well, I believed that they could get around by means of sonar and that was it.  I fell in love with them because of the fact that everybody (and by everybody I mean a broad majority of people) on the ground hates them, yet they continue to treat us kindly.  I fell in love with them because even though they are “blind” they listen.  They listen to what is around them and if thy do not do this they will miss a meal.  America needs to take on some aspects of the bat, we are blind and we do not listen, we are surely on a path to extinction.  If the bat did not listen, the bat would starve.  I hope America takes this into consideration; if we do not listen, we will die.

     If we do not take into consideration what the bat can teach us, if we cannot look beyond the face value of objects, we are sure to end.  The bat is told it is ugly, the bat is told it cannot see, and the bat is told it cannot live in the trees or caves because they are too important to us.  The bat, in return, eats bugs that would kill us, gives us fruit by spreading the seeds, and is even now helping stroke victims because their saliva acts as a blood thinner.  Why do they give us such great rewards?  Why do they treat us so well if we are killing them?  They are doing this because nature cares about its environment and it cares about those who inhabit it.  America needs to understand that the bat is a marvelous creature and that we should all thank them every time we see them.

     I am writing to tell this bat that I have learned all of the wrong doings of the American people.  I have learned about the corrupt people who are controlling the deforestation and about the people who do not care whether you live or die.  I am writing this to apologize to you for all of the people who fear you for no reason.  I learned that America would do whatever it wants for whatever it wants at the cost of anybody of anything.  I am telling you that I have learned that corporations have become the strongest part of our nation and that nature has been pushed back in our priority list.  I learned that in order for change to happen, action must be taken.  I am writing to the bat to show Americans what we are doing to you.  Let us know how you feel.  Perhaps Jensen was right, I hope he is not though.  He says that the animals are going extinct so that they are no longer supporting our way of life.  I understand, bat, if you leave our life.  You treat us so well and we treat you as if you were nothing.  I hope we can change how we are related to each other and live peacefully and happy.  I would hate to see you leave.

     I am writing this letter to apologize to, and to thank, the bat.  I apologize because I do not wish to cause you harm; yet my history tells me that I have done so and that I continue to do so.  I want to apologize because I fell under the majority and thought you to be a hideous beast.  I want to apologize to you because as a white man did not understand what wrongs I was causing by supporting a corrupt system.  I want to apologize about my white privilege; I want to apologize about everything that I have ever done that has caused you to be harmed without my knowledge.  I want to apologize, lastly, for valuing money over your life.  We destroy your home and your food so we can have money in our wallets and our purses.  We destroy everything you need so we can have everything we do not -- luxuries.  I as a white person am “entitled” to anything I want and can get it in whatever means possible, even if it comes at the exploitation of my mother, of other individuals of color, and of the animals and plants that inhabit this earth.  I am sorry that that previous statement is the norm of America.

     I want to thank the bat for everything it has done.  I want to thank the bat for providing us with wonderful fruits that keep us healthy.   I want to thank the bat for eating the bugs that carry disease and destroy crops.  I want to thank the bat for not treating us the way we treat it.  Most importantly of all, I want to thank the bat for making me understand.  Had I not seen that bat, had I not heard it, I would not have heard its story.  The screeching and the fluttering of its wings let me in, for a moment, to his or her life.  I was able to see and understand the bat.  I want to thank the bat for letting me understand that I need to be able to see without physically seeing.  Had I not seen the bat I would not have taken time to learn more about it.  This bat taught me that I need not wait until I see to learn; rather, I should learn to see.  And so I leave this class with a final thought that describes all I have learned about America in this class.  A bat, considered blind by our nation, taught an American how to see.

For a friend whose child has severe disabilities: A life beyond reason

Another Education is Possible
But first, undo the current system.

Study on K-12 Fil Am Education

Thank you, Lissa, for this post on the Schools of Living Tradition Symposium.

PostPeakOil Living

Today's lecturer, Andre Angelantoni, introduced my students to the reality that we are facing the end of the empire of Oil. He presented the science, the economics, and the "what to do?" proposals.
Highly recommended lecturer. Invite him to speak to your organization.

Waiting for Superman

Saw this documentary by Davis Guggenheim (of Inconvenient Truth).
Notes to self include:
- ignoring the obvious: what does race have to do with the failing school we see today? 50yrs after Brown vs Board of Education, schools are more segregated than ever (Harvard study of 2000). Guggenheim chose not to address this. See Bonilla-Silva's Racism Without Racists.
- most of the failing schools are from low-income, inner-city, communities of color. is there a connection between de-industrialization, white flight, outsourcing, loss of jobs and failing schools in these places?
- what legislations have been put in place to de-fund schools (Prop 13 in CA)?
- yes, there are teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom. is the solution to weaken teacher's unions?
- how do federal mandates like No Child Left Behind punish low performing schools and deepen the crisis? Is Obama's policy any better?
- who is this "Superman" hero and what does he represent? or who does he represent?
- Detroit's Another Education is Possible:  the devastation of deindustrialized Detroit is creating a revolution. Grace Lee Boogs: We have to stop waiting on government and corporations to save us, we have to redefine the meaning of education, work, community away from the economic model. is there a different model to work with? what values must this revolution embrace?
- Connect the dots: globalization is in crisis and the crisis in education in the US is part of this crisis. the documentary does not make this connection. it seems to beat up on a dying horse.
- the 19th century education that produced the affluence of the 20th century may have peaked -- and what we are witnessing are its unintended consequences. the economic model is failing us. capitalism is producing severe social crisis.
- the crisis is perhaps not only social and economic but also ecological, spiritual crisis. how can they be separate? some even it call it a civilizational crisis.
- how do we re-imagine ourselves out of a crisis? how do we re-define what it means to be 'educated'? how do we re-imagine the American Dream that has turned into a nightmare for so many?
- the old escapegoats won't work.
- Guggenheim, a good bleeding heart liberal, offers his own mea culpa everytime he passes a failing urban public school on his way to drop off his kids to a private school. he wants to do good. he wants to save education. but i doubt that charter schools alone will save education; weakening teachers' unions won't cut it. putting money into education won't do it.
- we need more than Superman. Superman is dead and he is not coming back to life.

-

Books on indigenous research methods

thanks to Letty for this link.
and by the way, dear one, i dreamt last night that we were dancing.
dancing!!

Resource

Decolonization in Unexpected Places/Andrea Smith

Community Dreaming

A version of this was published in the Asian Journal.
I am sharing it here to invite participation to community dreaming.
For the sake of the children. For the sake of the future.

The U.S. is #11...and the reason is

Thomas Friedman's column concludes:

In a flat world where everyone has access to everything, values matter more than ever. Right now the Hindus and Confucians have more Protestant ethics than we do, and as long as that is the case we’ll be No. 11.


Ah, dear Mr. Friedman -- I think the U.S. is undergoing a revolution of values that are more akin with the values of Hindus and Confucians. So you are right, the Hindus and Confucians are learning about Protestant ethics...and Americans are learning the values of the "Other" (or at least what used to be their values before they learned Protestant ethics)...and isn't that the yin-yang of things that keep things in balance? So why beat a dying horse? What you call the "greatest generation" may have produced its own unintended consequences. It created affluence that lulled and numbed affluent Americans to the idea of responsibility and sacrifice. The "success" of corporate capitalism has  reduced us to being mere consumers of brand names and cheap imports. Like the slogan of one superstore: why pay more?


Friedman's article cites sources that blame either school reform or the lack of motivation of students. But instead of asking why reform is failing or why students are lacking in motivation, he insists on reverting back to the "values of the greatest generation." But what if this generation doesn't want those values and want something else? Many students today know about Gaia theory, about ecological limits, about interdependent and interconnected survival on the planet. They do not want to be no. 1; in fact, they don't like hierarchies of any kind. They hear about the stories of genocides and holocausts committed by their ancestors and they are horrified that this was done in the name of being no. 1. No, they tell me; it's not about being no. 1, it's not about "us" versus "them", it's about "all of us".


Another World is Possible. Another America is Necessary.


Let's teach the U.S. the values of Kapwa and Kagandahang Loob and Pakikiramdam.

A Resilient Future

My new issue of YES magazine arrived yesterday. It is always a breath of fresh ideas that comforts my  sense of despair (after having watched the news  for two days about hostage-taking, miss universe, mosque debates, etc). This issue focuses on how to practice resiliency as we are faced with the slow collapse of capitalist civilizations.

*In one editorial, Boy M laments the possibility that  in the near future the $8B remittances of Fil Ams to relatives in the Philippines might dry up due to the economic downsizing in the U.S.
*In the news, GB has hijacked Martin Luther King and plans on a civil rights rally in DC on the anniversary of the I Have A Dream speech.
*It has all been predicted before: the escalation of race wars, escapegoating, war mongering.
*The Chronicle of Higher Ed's front page: How did we become a Nation of Fury?

Yet in this issue of YES, there are stories after stories of how ordinary folks are preparing for a post-peak oil future: from transition towns, to localization initiatives, to urban gardening, redesigning living spaces, redefining the meaning of work, re-defining education, plus insights on how to get out of Wall Street. These people get it. They know that nothing short of a radical shift in American values (of individualism, consumerism, competition, etc) is necessary. Another America is Necessary.

I long to have conversations like this in the Fil Am community. I am interested in the dilemma posed by Boy M: what would happen when the overseas remittance dries up? how can the Philippines re-imagine itself without this overseas remittance? what happens when we run out of oil to transport balikbayan boxes across the ocean or to fuel the airplanes carrying balikbayans? what would shift in the values of Filipinos in the diaspora and Filipinos in the homeland?

As a Filipino in the diaspora and as a US citizen, I join the many who are recognizing that the burden of creating smaller carbon footprint on the planet lies on the affluent countries. I suspect that part of the contraction of the US economy might be from the collective practices of folks who are already consuming less voluntarily or involuntarily. Of course, that's just a sliver of the reality; the bigger piece has to do with the macro: the fatal flaw and consequence of the gospel of free trade.

Furthermore, when asked if white supremacy can be divorced from capitalism, Immanuel Wallerstein at the US Social Forum said NO.